A long time ago, people began to grow fearful of the netherworld, and wanted to understand it. Soon, as a result, the rebirth story (SAISEI SETUWA) came into being. In it, characters who had experienced death told of their experiences in the netherworld, and through this story we can catch a glimpse of ancient people’s understanding of the netherworld. In the Chinese classical rebirth story, the distance between the real world and the netherworld is clearly written, while in the Japanese-Chinese story, a boundary exists between life and death. The characters can go through the boundary into the netherworld, and return to the real world. In the Chinese story, the characters enter the netherworld by a horizontal move, and come back to the real world by a perpendicular move. In the Japanese version, the characters go into the netherworld by falling perpendicularly into a hole. In this thesis, I will define the differences in the distance and boundary between the real world and the netherworld in the Japanese and Chinese versions of the rebirth story.